Program Related Investments
Minnesota Diversified Industries
Over the past four decades, St. Paul-based Minnesota Diversified Industries has employed a social enterprise model to assist people with disabilities and disadvantages by offering progressive development and job opportunities. As of the end of 2005, the firm, which provides packaging services and manufactures plastics, employed 610 workers in three cities (58 percent of whom were disabled and 14 percent of whom were disadvantaged) while enjoying gross sales of $40.3 million. The average wage of the workers exceeded $9 an hour at its two satellite locations and $11 an hour at its St. Read more about Minnesota Diversified Industries...
Social Enterprise
Arc of Hilo
Working with individuals who have developmental or other disabilities in Hawaii, the Arc of Hilo strives to improve their quality of life through training, employment, and residential opportunities. Benefiting 230 clients and employing more than 80 people in its Employment Training Service programs, the Arc of Hilo generates 49 percent of its revenue stream from business service contracts and fundraising, up from 25 percent just five years ago, significantly reducing its dependence on government support. Read more about Arc of Hilo...
Aspen Pointe
With revenues exceeding $48 million dollars, Aspen Pointe is the largest nonprofit in Colorado Springs, comprised of 12 organizations that serve more than 30,000 individuals and families each year through employment and career development, education services, and housing programs. The coalition also functions as a social enterprise, offering five business services and enterprises that train and employ disadvantaged residents, at-risk youth, and veterans. Read more about Aspen Pointe...
Chrysalis
Chrysalis helps economically disadvantaged and homeless individuals become self-sufficient through employment opportunities. To this end, Chrysalis runs two businesses, Labor Connections, which serves as a full-service staffing agency, and StreetWorks, which has contracts to clean over 100 city blocks with the city of Los Angeles and nearby Santa Monica. Read more about Chrysalis...
Clovernook Center for the Blind and Disabled
Clovernook Manufacturing Centers in Cincinnati, Ohio and Memphis, Tennessee, employ more than 140 people who are blind or visually impaired. These employees contribute 75 percent of the total direct labor at the two production facilities. Clovernook's business operations, which annually generate more than $6.7 million in revenue, are categorized into three departments – Braille Printing, Paper Products and Contract Manufacturing. Read more about Clovernook Center for the Blind and Disabled...
Coalition for Responsible Community Development
Striving to foster a safe and economically vibrant neighborhood, the Coalition for Responsible Community Development was founded in 2005 to improve local planning, development, and community services for low-income residents and small businesses in South Los Angeles. CRCD Enterprises, a social enterprise wing of the organization, was formed in 2010 to act as a job creation engine. Approved by the Better Business Bureau, CRCD Enterprises offers multiple services, including graffiti removal, decorative painting, moving and hauling, maintenance, and power washing and sand blasting. Read more about Coalition for Responsible Community Development...
FareStart
Since 1992, FareStart in Seattle has provided nutritious meals to those in need while helping the homeless and disadvantaged gain work skills running its social enterprise restaurant. Proceeds from the restaurant cover roughly 40% of the group's budget. FareStart produces over 2,500 meals daily and has helped transformed over 1,500 lives through its 16-week job training and placement program. Nearly half of the students involved in its training program are placed directly into jobs in the food-service industry. Read more about FareStart...
Fresh Start Catering (DC Central Kitchen)
This social enterprise venture, founded in 1996, has rapidly grown to serve over 400 clients a year, including The Smithsonian Institution, The Washington Ballet, The Washington Business Journal, the Meyer Foundation, the Department of Commerce, Fannie Mae Foundation and Georgetown University. Proceeds from the business fund DC Central Kitchen's anti-hunger and job training programs. Read more about Fresh Start Catering (DC Central Kitchen)...
Greyston Bakery
Founded in 1982, Greyston has grown to employ and provide job training to 55 people, most of whom had previously been chronically unemployed. The bakery currently generates $3.5 million in annual sales. Clients for its brownies, cakes, and baked goods include Ben and Jerry's and many upscale New York specialty stores. Read more about Greyston Bakery...
Homeboy Industries
Founded in 1992 by a Jesuit priest, Father Gregory Boyle, in response to the civil unrest in Los Angeles and as a means of providing employment training for former gang members, Homeboy Industries has since grown to include a bakery, silkscreen, maintenance, and landscaping businesses. All told the enterprises generate nearly $1 million a year in revenue while providing employment to over 60 at-risk youth and job placements for hundreds more.
Housing Works (Manhattan)
Housing Works was founded in June 1990 to provide supportive housing for homeless New Yorkers with AIDS and HIV. In its first 15 years, it has housed and/or provided services to over 15,000 people. Housing Works also operates a job training and placement program, which uses social enterprises, including supportive housing apartment rentals, a bookstore and a thrift shop, to underwrite the group's programs and help clients achieve self-sufficiency. In 2005, Housing Works earned over 25 percent of its revenues (more than $10 million) from its businesses. Read more about Housing Works (Manhattan)...
Independent Transportation Network
Founded in 1995, ITN provides door-to-door, on-demand rides for seniors, aiming to preserve senior mobility while avoiding the stigma of vanpool services. The organization charges an average fee of $8 per ride. Seniors may pay cash, have family members or others pay on their behalf, or donate time or cars for ride credit. The group supplements the cash with the labor of volunteer drivers. Earned income provides about 58 percent of revenues, with donated funds covering the balance. In 2005 the group provided 15,250 trips, using four donated cars, and served 600 riders. Read more about Independent Transportation Network...
La Mujer Obrera
La Mujer Obrera has worked to transform the conditions of Mexican immigrant women on the U.S.-Mexico border since the organization's founding in 1981. The nonprofit has developed an integrated strategy of community empowerment, part of which involves the operation of social purpose businesses, including an on-line retail store, a restaurant, and a “mercado”-style shopping center. Read more about La Mujer Obrera...
Manchester Bidwell
Manchester Bidwell and its subsidiaries, Manchester Craftsmen's Guild and Bidwell Training Center, operate a major jobs training center and community arts program. Founded in 1968, nonprofit Manchester Bidwell has grown to have a $3 million budget (less than $400,000 of which comes from donations, with the rest of its income generated by its programs). Read more about Manchester Bidwell...
Melwood
Founded in 1963, Melwood is a non-profit service provider that assists people with development disabilities, in part through operating its own businesses. From humble beginnings in the 1960s (in 1966, the organization had a total budget of $31,000), Melwood has grown into a $72 million organization (with earned income contributing 85 percent of its overall budget) that provides job training, employment, housing, and recreation to more than 2,100 people with disabilities. Read more about Melwood...
National Industries for the Blind
National Industries for the Blind (NIB) enhances the opportunities for economic and personal independence of persons who are blind, primarily through creating, sustaining and improving employment. The group employs almost 5,000 people who are blind per year, pays over 60 million dollars per year in wages and benefits for full- and part-time employees, offers rehabilitative services to about 125,000 children and adults, and delivers millions of dollars worth of products and services to federal, state and commercial markets per year. Read more about National Industries for the Blind...
NativeEnergy
NativeEnergy is a privately held company, but functions much like a nonprofit social enterprise, since its majority owner is a nonprofit organization, the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy—a council of Great Plains-area tribes in the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Iowa. NativeEnergy markets renewable energy credits or “green tags,” giving individuals and organizations a means to purchase “offsets” to compensate for their global warming pollution. Proceeds are used to finance wind turbine or other renewable forms of energy production. Read more about NativeEnergy...
New Door Ventures
Founded in 1981 to provide social services to at-risk youth, New Door Ventures (formerly Golden Gate Community, Inc.) began its social enterprise operations in 1990 as a means to provide job training and jobs to the at-risk population it serves. The nonprofit currently operates a bike shop (Pedal Revolution) and a print shop (Ashbury Images). During the period between 1998 and 2005, New Doors employed a total of more than 200 at-risk youth and young adults. Its social enterprises raise roughly $4 million or roughly 80 percent of its $5 million budget. Read more about New Door Ventures...
NPower New York (Manhattan)
NPower NY began offering services in the spring of 2001 and is the second oldest and the largest affiliate in the NPower Network, a national network of local nonprofits that help other nonprofits use technology to better serve their communities. In addition to training disadvantaged workers to provide computer services to other charities, NPower fulfills a second mission of giving the workers job skills and paid employment through its information technology service social enterprise business. Read more about NPower New York (Manhattan)...
Pioneer Human Services
Pioneer Human Services, founded in 1962, employs 700 people in its businesses, most of whom come from its target population of ex-offenders and former drug abusers. Among its business is Pioneer Industries, a metal fabricator business that supplies Boeing. Its annual budget of $55 million is primarily funded through Pioneer's business income. Read more about Pioneer Human Services...
PRIDE Industries
In 1966, a group of parents founded PRIDE Industries in the basement of a church to provide better lives and futures for their own children with disabilities. Today, PRIDE employs a workforce of 3,100 — 2,500 of whom are disabled—generates $95 million in annual revenue, and is the third largest manufacturing and service company in the greater Sacramento region. More than 99% of the nonprofit group's revenue comes from service and product sales. Read more about PRIDE Industries...
Rebuild Resources
Founded in 1984 by a recovering alcoholic, Rebuild Resources owns and operates two social enterprises that provide transitional employment for men and women who want to become sober and self sufficient. One business produces custom apparel (such as event t-shirts); the other does light manufacturing. To date, more than nine hundred men and women have graduated from the program. Rebuild estimates a success rate of sixty-eight percent and a social return of nearly half a million dollars per successful graduate. Read more about Rebuild Resources...
Taller San Jose
Founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange in 1995, Taller San Jose is a social enterprise designed to provide 220 undereducated and unskilled young adults age 18-28 annually with short-term intensive paid training in construction, medical and office careers. Since inception, it has helped more than 4,500 young adults find living-wage employment - of which 80 percent remain employed after one year and 92 percent with a criminal record do not reoffend. Read more about Taller San Jose...
Transformative Action Institute
The Transformative Action Institute is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to develop a new generation of social entrepreneurs and problem-solvers. Through its Transform America initiative, the group aims to train 1,000 university students a year in methods of social innovation and enterprise. The program also includes a national competition to select the 20 best projects, with each of the winning projects receiving seed money of $50,000 to launch their organizations. Read more about Transformative Action Institute...
Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers
Founded in 1994, TROSA, the largest drug rehabilitation program in the state, runs seven business enterprises, which include a moving company, a brick masonry company, a lawn care maintenance company, a catering business, a paint company, and a picture frame shop. A large part of the staffing comes from drug rehabilitation program residents. Part of TROSA's two-year resident program requires that residents work in one of the businesses. Read more about Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers...
Women's Rural Entrepreneurship Network (WREN)
Founded in 1994, WREN is a nonprofit organization dedicated to better lives and livelihoods for rural women and men. To support their small business support program, the group operates a number of social enterprises including an artisan retail store, an art gallery, an on-line store and a quarterly magazine. These enterprises both help support the nonprofit's operations and, importantly, help to market the goods made by many of the small businesses that the nonprofit supports. Read more about Women's Rural Entrepreneurship Network (WREN)...
Social Enterprise
Arc of Hilo
Working with individuals who have developmental or other disabilities in Hawaii, the Arc of Hilo strives to improve their quality of life through training, employment, and residential opportunities. Benefiting 230 clients and employing more than 80 people in its Employment Training Service programs, the Arc of Hilo generates 49 percent of its revenue stream from business service contracts and fundraising, up from 25 percent just five years ago, significantly reducing its dependence on government support. Read more about Arc of Hilo...
Aspen Pointe
With revenues exceeding $48 million dollars, Aspen Pointe is the largest nonprofit in Colorado Springs, comprised of 12 organizations that serve more than 30,000 individuals and families each year through employment and career development, education services, and housing programs. The coalition also functions as a social enterprise, offering five business services and enterprises that train and employ disadvantaged residents, at-risk youth, and veterans. Read more about Aspen Pointe...
Chrysalis
Chrysalis helps economically disadvantaged and homeless individuals become self-sufficient through employment opportunities. To this end, Chrysalis runs two businesses, Labor Connections, which serves as a full-service staffing agency, and StreetWorks, which has contracts to clean over 100 city blocks with the city of Los Angeles and nearby Santa Monica. Read more about Chrysalis...
Clovernook Center for the Blind and Disabled
Clovernook Manufacturing Centers in Cincinnati, Ohio and Memphis, Tennessee, employ more than 140 people who are blind or visually impaired. These employees contribute 75 percent of the total direct labor at the two production facilities. Clovernook's business operations, which annually generate more than $6.7 million in revenue, are categorized into three departments – Braille Printing, Paper Products and Contract Manufacturing. Read more about Clovernook Center for the Blind and Disabled...
Coalition for Responsible Community Development
Striving to foster a safe and economically vibrant neighborhood, the Coalition for Responsible Community Development was founded in 2005 to improve local planning, development, and community services for low-income residents and small businesses in South Los Angeles. CRCD Enterprises, a social enterprise wing of the organization, was formed in 2010 to act as a job creation engine. Approved by the Better Business Bureau, CRCD Enterprises offers multiple services, including graffiti removal, decorative painting, moving and hauling, maintenance, and power washing and sand blasting. Read more about Coalition for Responsible Community Development...
FareStart
Since 1992, FareStart in Seattle has provided nutritious meals to those in need while helping the homeless and disadvantaged gain work skills running its social enterprise restaurant. Proceeds from the restaurant cover roughly 40% of the group's budget. FareStart produces over 2,500 meals daily and has helped transformed over 1,500 lives through its 16-week job training and placement program. Nearly half of the students involved in its training program are placed directly into jobs in the food-service industry. Read more about FareStart...
Fresh Start Catering (DC Central Kitchen)
This social enterprise venture, founded in 1996, has rapidly grown to serve over 400 clients a year, including The Smithsonian Institution, The Washington Ballet, The Washington Business Journal, the Meyer Foundation, the Department of Commerce, Fannie Mae Foundation and Georgetown University. Proceeds from the business fund DC Central Kitchen's anti-hunger and job training programs. Read more about Fresh Start Catering (DC Central Kitchen)...
Greyston Bakery
Founded in 1982, Greyston has grown to employ and provide job training to 55 people, most of whom had previously been chronically unemployed. The bakery currently generates $3.5 million in annual sales. Clients for its brownies, cakes, and baked goods include Ben and Jerry's and many upscale New York specialty stores. Read more about Greyston Bakery...
Homeboy Industries
Founded in 1992 by a Jesuit priest, Father Gregory Boyle, in response to the civil unrest in Los Angeles and as a means of providing employment training for former gang members, Homeboy Industries has since grown to include a bakery, silkscreen, maintenance, and landscaping businesses. All told the enterprises generate nearly $1 million a year in revenue while providing employment to over 60 at-risk youth and job placements for hundreds more.
Housing Works (Manhattan)
Housing Works was founded in June 1990 to provide supportive housing for homeless New Yorkers with AIDS and HIV. In its first 15 years, it has housed and/or provided services to over 15,000 people. Housing Works also operates a job training and placement program, which uses social enterprises, including supportive housing apartment rentals, a bookstore and a thrift shop, to underwrite the group's programs and help clients achieve self-sufficiency. In 2005, Housing Works earned over 25 percent of its revenues (more than $10 million) from its businesses. Read more about Housing Works (Manhattan)...
Independent Transportation Network
Founded in 1995, ITN provides door-to-door, on-demand rides for seniors, aiming to preserve senior mobility while avoiding the stigma of vanpool services. The organization charges an average fee of $8 per ride. Seniors may pay cash, have family members or others pay on their behalf, or donate time or cars for ride credit. The group supplements the cash with the labor of volunteer drivers. Earned income provides about 58 percent of revenues, with donated funds covering the balance. In 2005 the group provided 15,250 trips, using four donated cars, and served 600 riders. Read more about Independent Transportation Network...
La Mujer Obrera
La Mujer Obrera has worked to transform the conditions of Mexican immigrant women on the U.S.-Mexico border since the organization's founding in 1981. The nonprofit has developed an integrated strategy of community empowerment, part of which involves the operation of social purpose businesses, including an on-line retail store, a restaurant, and a “mercado”-style shopping center. Read more about La Mujer Obrera...
Manchester Bidwell
Manchester Bidwell and its subsidiaries, Manchester Craftsmen's Guild and Bidwell Training Center, operate a major jobs training center and community arts program. Founded in 1968, nonprofit Manchester Bidwell has grown to have a $3 million budget (less than $400,000 of which comes from donations, with the rest of its income generated by its programs). Read more about Manchester Bidwell...
Melwood
Founded in 1963, Melwood is a non-profit service provider that assists people with development disabilities, in part through operating its own businesses. From humble beginnings in the 1960s (in 1966, the organization had a total budget of $31,000), Melwood has grown into a $72 million organization (with earned income contributing 85 percent of its overall budget) that provides job training, employment, housing, and recreation to more than 2,100 people with disabilities. Read more about Melwood...
National Industries for the Blind
National Industries for the Blind (NIB) enhances the opportunities for economic and personal independence of persons who are blind, primarily through creating, sustaining and improving employment. The group employs almost 5,000 people who are blind per year, pays over 60 million dollars per year in wages and benefits for full- and part-time employees, offers rehabilitative services to about 125,000 children and adults, and delivers millions of dollars worth of products and services to federal, state and commercial markets per year. Read more about National Industries for the Blind...
NativeEnergy
NativeEnergy is a privately held company, but functions much like a nonprofit social enterprise, since its majority owner is a nonprofit organization, the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy—a council of Great Plains-area tribes in the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Iowa. NativeEnergy markets renewable energy credits or “green tags,” giving individuals and organizations a means to purchase “offsets” to compensate for their global warming pollution. Proceeds are used to finance wind turbine or other renewable forms of energy production. Read more about NativeEnergy...
New Door Ventures
Founded in 1981 to provide social services to at-risk youth, New Door Ventures (formerly Golden Gate Community, Inc.) began its social enterprise operations in 1990 as a means to provide job training and jobs to the at-risk population it serves. The nonprofit currently operates a bike shop (Pedal Revolution) and a print shop (Ashbury Images). During the period between 1998 and 2005, New Doors employed a total of more than 200 at-risk youth and young adults. Its social enterprises raise roughly $4 million or roughly 80 percent of its $5 million budget. Read more about New Door Ventures...
NPower New York (Manhattan)
NPower NY began offering services in the spring of 2001 and is the second oldest and the largest affiliate in the NPower Network, a national network of local nonprofits that help other nonprofits use technology to better serve their communities. In addition to training disadvantaged workers to provide computer services to other charities, NPower fulfills a second mission of giving the workers job skills and paid employment through its information technology service social enterprise business. Read more about NPower New York (Manhattan)...
Pioneer Human Services
Pioneer Human Services, founded in 1962, employs 700 people in its businesses, most of whom come from its target population of ex-offenders and former drug abusers. Among its business is Pioneer Industries, a metal fabricator business that supplies Boeing. Its annual budget of $55 million is primarily funded through Pioneer's business income. Read more about Pioneer Human Services...
PRIDE Industries
In 1966, a group of parents founded PRIDE Industries in the basement of a church to provide better lives and futures for their own children with disabilities. Today, PRIDE employs a workforce of 3,100 — 2,500 of whom are disabled—generates $95 million in annual revenue, and is the third largest manufacturing and service company in the greater Sacramento region. More than 99% of the nonprofit group's revenue comes from service and product sales. Read more about PRIDE Industries...
Rebuild Resources
Founded in 1984 by a recovering alcoholic, Rebuild Resources owns and operates two social enterprises that provide transitional employment for men and women who want to become sober and self sufficient. One business produces custom apparel (such as event t-shirts); the other does light manufacturing. To date, more than nine hundred men and women have graduated from the program. Rebuild estimates a success rate of sixty-eight percent and a social return of nearly half a million dollars per successful graduate. Read more about Rebuild Resources...
Taller San Jose
Founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange in 1995, Taller San Jose is a social enterprise designed to provide 220 undereducated and unskilled young adults age 18-28 annually with short-term intensive paid training in construction, medical and office careers. Since inception, it has helped more than 4,500 young adults find living-wage employment - of which 80 percent remain employed after one year and 92 percent with a criminal record do not reoffend. Read more about Taller San Jose...
Transformative Action Institute
The Transformative Action Institute is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to develop a new generation of social entrepreneurs and problem-solvers. Through its Transform America initiative, the group aims to train 1,000 university students a year in methods of social innovation and enterprise. The program also includes a national competition to select the 20 best projects, with each of the winning projects receiving seed money of $50,000 to launch their organizations. Read more about Transformative Action Institute...
Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers
Founded in 1994, TROSA, the largest drug rehabilitation program in the state, runs seven business enterprises, which include a moving company, a brick masonry company, a lawn care maintenance company, a catering business, a paint company, and a picture frame shop. A large part of the staffing comes from drug rehabilitation program residents. Part of TROSA's two-year resident program requires that residents work in one of the businesses. Read more about Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers...
Women's Rural Entrepreneurship Network (WREN)
Founded in 1994, WREN is a nonprofit organization dedicated to better lives and livelihoods for rural women and men. To support their small business support program, the group operates a number of social enterprises including an artisan retail store, an art gallery, an on-line store and a quarterly magazine. These enterprises both help support the nonprofit's operations and, importantly, help to market the goods made by many of the small businesses that the nonprofit supports. Read more about Women's Rural Entrepreneurship Network (WREN)...
Program Related Investments
Minnesota Diversified Industries
Over the past four decades, St. Paul-based Minnesota Diversified Industries has employed a social enterprise model to assist people with disabilities and disadvantages by offering progressive development and job opportunities. As of the end of 2005, the firm, which provides packaging services and manufactures plastics, employed 610 workers in three cities (58 percent of whom were disabled and 14 percent of whom were disadvantaged) while enjoying gross sales of $40.3 million. The average wage of the workers exceeded $9 an hour at its two satellite locations and $11 an hour at its St. Read more about Minnesota Diversified Industries...